A Curious Event
by Artemis1000
Summary: We loved Italy, we wouldn't have been fighting for him otherwise, yet we couldn't help shying away from him and wondering if he was more or less than human. 2P dark!Italy. Kink meme de-anon.


Content Advice: Mentions of and implied violence, warfare, but nothing graphic  
>Notes: Kink meme deanon for this prompt: <em>Any nation: Frightening humans. I want to see a nation do something normal for them, getting up after getting shot, fighting in battles and not being bothered by murdering others, using their super strength or magic, or just never aging. And then I want to see a human (can be whoever) reacting to that. Knowing that their nation really isn't human. Because if you think about it, the nations could very easily be really scary.<em>  
>I combined it with this prompt from dark_fest 2011, which I'd fallen in love with at first sight. I just didn't have the right character for it until Himaruya-san gave us 2P!Italy. <em>Everywhere around them there was torture and death, so to see someone this calm... curious even, was quite the event. <em>Thus, the first line isn't mine, I merely paraphrased it.

**A Curious Event**

Everywhere around us there was torture and death, so to see someone this calm... curious even, was quite the event.

When the cannons ceased to fire, he would pick his way gingerly between the corpses with the earnest grace reserved for ballet dancers and tightrope walkers. He would crouch by the side of dying men from who even the most battle-hardened medics turned away in horror at their gruesome wounds. When the moans and cries died as the guns had before, he would sweep over the battlefield like a crow and collect the dog tags. He would kneel besides the dead and close their eyes with a gentle brush of his glove-clad fingertips.

When he returned, he would still be smiling.

Italy Veneziano was rarely seen without a smile.

He would smile when he stabbed his knife up to the hilt into a man's heart and twisted.

He would smile when he washed the blood off his gloves afterwards.

Sometimes, he would hum as well, but if he hummed in battle, the men preferred not to remain to watch the spectacle.

Every man in the company could have written a book about the smiles of Italy Veneziano.

Italy was a land of sunshine, but no one had ever claimed that sunshine was inherently kind.

That is not to say that Italy Veneziano was unkind.

He never took more than his fair share; he never skirted his duties, no matter how mundane or degrading, though the men would have been too frightened to protest. He treated the sons born to Italy's south with the same respect and compassion as the north's children.

The men loved Italy. If they didn't, they wouldn't have been fighting and dying in his name.

It wasn't that Italy was unkind or that the man didn't love him, yet they feared him no less for it.

When Italy passed them by in his light, graceful walk, always a bit playful, as if he were about to start spinning and dancing any moment now, they would shy away so they didn't brush against him.

After he addressed them in his cheerful, gentle coo that never rose in anger, they would confess to their comrades that his voice had made their skin crawl.

At some point in the war, no one could quite remember by whom or when or why, a rumour had started. No matter how suicidal the mission he went on, Italy would bring every man back alive. The rumour followed him to every unit he served in as rumours were wont to do. No one knew whether it was more than a fancy rumour the men clung to when they were sent on what amounted to suicide missions, but no one could recall an instance it had been proven wrong, either.

Nevertheless, the men broke out into cold sweat when he looked one of their number right into the eyes and cooed for the first time, "Ve~ you are with me."

It was said that what the men saw was far worse than the violent death they might have found on the battlefield otherwise, but the ones who returned never spoke of it and rumors have the funny habit of growing more fanciful with every retelling.

What they knew for sure was that Italy would return with a serene smile on his lips and wash the blood off his gloves.

No one could quite say when or why the men had started fearing their own nation more than the enemy.

Maybe it had been something about that never-faltering smile and lilting voice, so sweet and innocent when he was anything but in battle. Maybe it had been the fact that nations didn't die from wounds like humans did. To see a man walk and talk who should by all means be dead could make the strongest of soldiers cower in fear.

There were other rumors as well, which were only whispered in the darkest of nights. That he would put the dying out of their misery when he went out onto the battlefield after battle. That he would only smile when a man offended him, but the man would disappear within the week, supposedly deserted and never to be found again, but Italy would be seen washing blood off his gloves.

In truth, by that point, it was most likely they continued to fear him and tell evermore fantastic horror tales of him because everyone else did it. It had become a rite of passage to proclaim to fear Italy.

For my part, I had never put much faith in the rumors.

The trenches can make the most reasonable man lose his mind, but I had seen such men before and Italy wasn't one of them. Italy's state seemed to be quite the contrary of mad and maybe that was why the men found him to be such an unnatural creature that exalted their imagination.

While everyone else tried their best to escape the horrible reality of warfare, our nation approached it with a child's curiosity.

If his kind takes some perverse joy in destruction, you ask? Whether they revel in the chaos? Treasure the change in pace from the boredom of eternity? I have always tried my hardest not to find answers for these questions. There are some things humans are better off not knowing.

There is one thing I know for sure, though: they are in some ways just as human as the likes of us.

It was after a battle and Italy had worn a particularly brittle smile when he retreated to his tent instead of holding his little cleaning ritual right there in front of the men as usual. I was ordered to deliver a telegraph to him.

When I entered the tent, he was washing his gloves and knife in a small bowl of water. I couldn't see his face, he sat crouched over the bowl, but the water was pink, so I assumed that he wore a cruel smile.

Although he had bade me to enter, I lingered by the tent flap, uncertain of my welcome or if I wanted to be welcome at all. I must admit that I clung to the telegraph as if it were a lifeline. I had never been in his tent; I was just a lowly soldier, after all. Funny, I had taken him for an orderly man.

I had been about to ask if I could just leave the telegraph there for him, when he hissed and paused in rubbing the soap between his gloved hands. He pulled his hands out of the bowl and ripped off the gloves. As it lay there discarded, I could see a long gash in the right glove. His hand was coated in dried blood.

I echoed his hiss and flexed my muscles to dart forward, but he stopped me by saying in a dull voice, "It's not mine."

He flexed his hand and spread the fingers, turned it this way and that way. A few dried flakes of blood came loose.

Suddenly, I became aware that drops of clear fluid hit the pink water and created delicate little ripples. Each plink of water hitting water was oppressively loud in the silence. I felt a wave of sympathy. My tent wasn't particularly waterproof, either.

It wasn't until later, when I was about to drift off to sleep, that I realized it hadn't rained in days.

The end


End file.
